Whether you’re an online shop or service business getting started with Google Ads campaigns, it’s important to consider how you’re going to track the performance of those campaigns in the long run. Whilst metrics such as clicks, impressions, and CTR are helpful to monitor the engagement your ads have seen, these metrics don’t reflect how many times desired actions have been carried out on your website, or where this success originates from. 

What is conversion tracking?

Conversion tracking simply allows you to understand where sales or leads are coming from and allows you to optimize your digital marketing and continue to grow your business. 

A ‘conversion’ is a catch-all term used to refer to any beneficial on-site action that can be taken by a potential customer – many businesses don’t aim for traditional ‘sales’, and so ‘conversion tracking’ refers to the tracking of any positive action. This could be someone submitting an inquiry form, downloading a brochure, or visiting a certain page on your website. 

Conversion tracking itself is a small piece of code that will need to be pasted onto your website. You’ll then define your conversion action within your account to ensure your conversion metric is labeled and recorded correctly. 

Why should you apply conversion tracking?

Conversion tracking in Google and Microsoft allows you to see exactly which keywords and ads have generated the most conversions for you, allowing you to understand where your marketing budget would be best allocated. On the flip side, conversion tracking also allows you to identify keywords and ads that record impressions, clicks, and therefore cost, but no conversions. This provides opportunities for efficiency and empowers you to reallocate budget from underperforming areas of your account to those which are more likely to achieve the results you’re looking for. 

Conversion tracking also gives Google and Microsoft the required data to be able to understand where conversions are most likely to originate from and to act on your behalf to increase the number of conversions you receive. For example, one of your ad copies might serve more often than another based on it’s successful conversion history. Without conversion tracking, the search engine can only optimise towards engagement metrics such as clicks, which in isolation can be misleading. 

Conversion tracking unlocks more advanced features within your account

By implementing the conversion tracking code, you’ll also be able to assign a monetary value to your conversion. This allows you to view the conversion value that each account element has achieved, and easily identify your best-performing keywords or campaigns based not just on website traffic, but on actual revenue. 

Conversion tracking also allows you to make use of Smart Bidding strategies, which can make bidding decisions for you to help achieve your goals. You’ll be able to use bid strategies that automatically help you to increase your conversion volume, achieve a lower cost per conversion, or even maximize your ROAS (return on ad spend).